NAS and SAN storages differ in their architecture and usage.

• NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a file-level storage that uses a standard Ethernet network to provide shared access to files.

• SAN (Storage ...read more

Both network attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SAN) were developed to solve the problem of making stored data available to many users at once. Each of them provides dedicated storage for a group of users, but they couldn’t be more different in their approach to achieving their mission.

NAS is a single storage device that serves files over Ethernet and is relatively inexpensive and easy to set up, while a SAN is a tightly coupled network of multiple devices that is more expensive and complex to set up and manage. From a user perspective, the biggest difference between NAS and SAN is that NAS devices deliver shared storage as network mounted volumes and use protocols like NFS and SMB/CIFS, while SAN-connected disks appear to the user as local drives.

In this post, we provide an overview of the differences between NAS and SAN, as well as the kinds of applications they are best suited for to help you in deciding which is right for you.